I’ve moved to my own domain at wei.buzzdsign.com

Congratulations to Michael Phelps for his marvelous Olympic records!

Phelps won eight gold medals, eclipsing Mark Spitz’s seven-gold performance at the 1972 Munich Games. Phelps now has an astonishing 14 golds in his career, five more than any Olympian ever.

Quoted from AFP:
“My mom and I still joke about the fact I had a middle school teacher who said I would never be successful,” said Phelps, who after his parents’ divorce was brought up by his mother, Debbie, with his two older, swimming sisters, Hilary and Whitney. All three were in Beijing to share in Phelps’s triumph.

References:

• AFP: Phelp’s evolution from restless kid to Olympic titan
• Bush praises swimmer Phelps’ Olympic performance
• Olympic champ screamed in first swimming lesson

This is a reminder for everyone [from me (yeah, me the blog writer ) ] :

“Never give up!” “Achieve Your Dreams!” “No matter how hard your life is, it would only make you stronger in the end.”

“Thank You and Goodbye, Randy!”

Randy Pausch has passed away on July 25, 2008.

You may remember him by his infamous Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.

Thank you for the inspiration you’ve passed on, Randy.

It will be forever remembered by many.

Reference:

• An Enduring Legacy (@ Carnagie Melon website)
  

“Thank You, Bill.”

On June 27, 2008, Bill Gates left his day-to-day work at his office for 30-years at Microsoft and moved on. The person in charge is now Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer. There are many talks and speculations about the future of Microsoft, post-Gates era. One of which is will Microsoft be open source friendly at ZDNet. Open source? Microsoft is a bit “open” lately with the release of their express edition of their visual studio 2008, which is a good sign. But in my humble opinion, talking about openness, you can find better sources of better documented and better supported APIs elsewhere.

Apart from that, shall we move on to another topic? Bill Gates contributed a lot to the world of personal computing (PC), from his vision of “a computer in every household” to establishing one of the world’s biggest software company and making himself one of the richest man in the world in the process. It’s like every computer geek’s dream comes true.

David Letterman’s Tribute to Bill Gates

The product he offered may not be as innovative and hassle-free as his competitors had (a small bite of Apple, anyone?), but he managed to pulled it off by proving that the majority of people use his instead of theirs. Even in one memorable presentation of his then new operating system “Windows 98″ (if I’m not mistaken, correct me if I’m wrong), the Plug and Play feature produced a “Wouw…” “Blue Screen of Death” (BSoD), but still he managed to convince a lot of people to use it.

The notorious Blue Screen of Death

But now, the question is “Is the future still belong to Microsoft?”, some may ask.

Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista, somehow doesn’t meet most people’s expectations. Some choose to stick with Vista’s predecessor, Windows XP, mostly because XP is “lighter” than Vista in terms of system requirements.

Microsoft’s late entry to the WWW scene opened up a big hole that enabled companies, such as Google, to triumph. Microsoft tried to takeover Yahoo! but somehow thwarted by Google, some may say. So what do you think? Will Microsoft still dominate in the post-Gates era? Or is it Google’s turn? Or perhaps Apple’s? The Open source community?

All in all, we ought to deliver our many thanks to Bill Gates for his realizing his dreams, putting the word “personal” into computing, otherwise we don’t have the luxury of having a computer in our household (other than calculators) or perhaps if you want one you should buy a big “space-consuming” mainframe computer instead.

Here’s the exact words from Microsoft’s official biography: “Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates’ foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.”

References:

• Microsoft’s official biography of Bill Gates
• Bill Gates’ Wikipedia entry
• ABC News: Bill Gates’ Retirement, It Won’t Last Long

stumbled upon this subject: business potential of blogs at slideshare.net

“Business Impact of Blogs” slide

(at Slideshare.net)

“Measuring Success of Corporate Blog” slide

(at Slideshare.net)

“A Framework for Measuring Blog success” slide

(at Slideshare.net)

“Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”

What would you do if you have only so little time left in life? Have you ever thought about it?
Would you appreciate life more than ever? Would your perception of time change?

Would you love your loved ones even more knowing that your time on earth is limited?

I’ll introduce you to one professor who “taught” life lessons and gave inspirations to lots of people, as some of his lectures are shared on the internet via Youtube. His infamous “Last Lecture” is shared and watched by many.

Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” on Oprah

10min video (at Youtube.com)
[Note: total filesize 23.64MB]

Here’s the long version of his last lecture:

Randy Pausch’s
Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

76min video (at Youtube.com)
[Note: total filesize 177MB]

His point about “the brick wall”, to keep those unworthy aside, will amaze you about how true that truly is in real life. You have to struggle, do your best and show how badly you want something or even someone, and how serious, how determined you are to achieve it.

“Randy’s Time Management Lecture”

I’ve also watched his other “uber-interesting” presentation on “Time Management” [click here for the HTML version], wow, it was unexpectedly funny and life-changing. You should hear about his “life-work balance”. If you’re single you feel like you have all the time in the world, but actually… Just watch the lecture and hear the rest

Randy Pausch’s
Time Management presentation

76min video (at video.google.com)
[Note: total filesize 177MB]

I’ve once tried presenting the same subject, but didn’t manage to catch the crowd’s attention. You can find the presentation file at slideshare.net, though.

My advice is go to Prof. Pausch’s homepage if you haven’t done so and watch his presentations, you won’t regret it.

Time is your most valuable resource that you cannot buy back. He sure made his point about opportunity cost. I simply can’t imagine that coming out of a Computer Science Professor.

References:

• Randy Pausch’s Home Page
• Randy Pausch – The 2008 TIME 100, Heroes and Pioneers
• Randy Pausch @ Wikipedia
• The Legacy of Randy Pausch and His Lecture Videos